What Are The Solutions?

 

Time And Place

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, 

Sacramento, CA

THE ANSWER

Why do we keep personifying
why do we keep asking
why do we pretend,
try to end . . .

    the solutions . . .
       what are the solutions
          where are the solutions
               why are the solutions

impossible to see
to realize
to scorn
to refuse
to need, Oh

     need,   need,   need,
         that is what we need,
                more need,
                     more solutions.

____________________

THE DARKNESS

You have come with your gift of black roses
for my midnight joy. Now the house
is full of flowers that die after all,
no matter how I loved them.

All of my rooms are thick with their dying
and I am sad now. Flowers cannot
heal me, yet you keep bringing
these impossible black roses.

                                               
(prev. pub. in My Best Regret, Mini-Chap, 2008)

 

 

 

 Rain Or Weeping

IN HOSPITAL

It was winter. It was dark. She sat
in a hospital wheelchair. It rained,   
the streets, the doors, the windows—
all ways of arriving and leaving.
Her eyes refused—would not

see or follow, became obsessed with
her sleeves, her pockets, her small
table of possessions. Hours clung
together, like stuck pages hard to

separate one from the other. Rain or
weeping made this impossible.
It was winter. No one came.

She knew, or did not know—the
windows looked in with the rain.

                            
(prev. pub in Poet’s Guild Quarterly, 1998)

_____________________

RIGHT BEHIND YOU

Mother, I am clambering right behind you over
perilous distance. We are competitors. Loose stones
fall behind us; I mutter and
follow, grabbing at anything.

You laugh and gain a better hold.  

If I fall, you will be angry, scold my unskilled
clumsiness. If you fall, I will have to hear forever
your impossible descent, our echoes mingling.   

                                                 
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5/17/16)

 

 

 

 To Love Without Regret

THE MAN WITH DEAD EYES

He wants to be rescued from his own
bitterness. He wants to love without
regret. He wants someone to save him.

He will wear his darkest countenance
to prove how impossible this is—
fold his arms against embrace—

mask his face with cynicism—
narrow his eyes, and watch your eyes
for what he needs.

He will fight you to prove him right,
dare you to prove him wrong.
Though pierced with Cupid’s arrows,

he will not bleed—
he has blood of stone. Dare to love him
and you will love alone.

___________________

LOVE STORY :
After Green Landscape by Marc Chagall. 1949

Call it green, like youth,
like love before it betrays itself,
like any place together or apart—

like any sentiment
before it turns to cynicism,
or the bitter taste that will be next.

Erase this from your heart—you have
a chance—impossible at best—despite all
love’s disclaimers who will preach and preach.

 

 

 

 The Journal

MISFORTUNE

Misfortune—that old hag, her gleaming presence,
what she wears to introduce herself, those semi-
precious birds she keeps on risky pedestals, the
charming echoes they have learned.

What does she want of me, I’ve nothing more to
lose or give. I’ve paid my dues to her demands—
those lies she told—those mis-directions that she
gave when she was all cajole and promise.

But now that I see her true face in her own mirror,
I all but lose my nerve : her costume in rags, her
makeup ruined. She turns to me again—this time
contrite—and once again I ask her to save me.

                                                      
After “Misfortune”, Selected Poems by Luis Cernuda

 

 

 

Between Then And Twilight

 

THE LAVENDER ROSE OF THIS POEM

You gave me this rose from
your desk because I admired it.

Not a sacrifice-rose
from a jealous garden,

but a nameless gift-rose
of impossible hue.

“Ooh,” I said, and I touched it
to show my awe;

and when you left for the day
you brought me the lavender rose

in its plastic crystal vase
and said,

“Take it home
and write a poem about it.”

 

 

 

The Dreaming Window

SOOTHINGS

Who do you think I am in the moonlight every night
by the dreaming window, watching stars leap
above ghostly cows,
the moon growing dizzy with love?

Who do you think dries the bones of light
that shudder the curtains?

And who do you think howls the dogs to sleep?

Who do you think is in love with impossible sounds
from the mouths of flowers,
those moans of dying in unfamiliar vases
on moon-dusted surfaces?

Watch with me—help me remember—since you
are the one who started all this with your sighing
and crying—refusing to enter
the terrible dreams.

There is only one more hour before light
comes swaying over the distance that is night . . .
Say this again to yourself: only the distance
of the night . . .   Now you can sleep . . .

 

 

 

The Hour Of Now

 

WHAT ANGEL?
After Rumi (“to form one pearl”)

Where?
Personified word.

Belief in shadow,
in struck vision.

Light of imagination.
Of faith, of doubt.

Admonition?
How brief to be real—

a flicker of sound
to the silent mind.

Even now,
questioning—

all that questioning
of the impossible.

________________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THE COMPLEX EMOTION
—Joyce Odam

    1.    Love. The word is love.
What do we know of it?

    2.    For some, it is the start,
the middle, and the end.
It is enough.

    3.    It sometimes comes in knots,
hard to untie, impossible to send
through love’s old needle-eye.

_________________________

Impossible, says Joyce! We have poetry and photos from Joyce Odam today, chiming in on our Seed of the Week, “Impossible”—and we thank her for the fine work she brings to the Kitchen, as always. Be sure to check each Tuesday for the week’s Seed of the Week, and for more wonderful work by Joyce Odam!

Our new SOW is “Choices”. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from. And see every Form Fiddlers’ Friday for poetry form challenges, including those of the Ekphrastic type.

________________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

Green Landscape
—Marc Chagall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For upcoming poetry happenings in
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